Educational Science

Here's How a Huge Exoplanet Very Close to Earth Could Hide Strange Forms of Life

There's a rocky planet out there that's very big and cold. Its sun, a red dwarf named Barnard's star looks much larger in its sky than Earth's. It bathes the planet in X-rays and ultraviolet light, likely enough radiation to strip away any atmosphere. But Barnard's star is also much...

The Closest Exoplanet to Earth Could Be 'Highly Habitable'

Just a cosmic hop, skip and jump away, an Earth-size planet orbits the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri. Ever since the discovery of the exoplanet — known as Proxima Centauri b— in 2016, people have wondered whether it could be capable of sustaining life. Now, using computer models...

A strange green space rock hailed as perhaps the first meteorite ever discovered from Mercury may be too old to have come from the solar system's innermost planet, some scientists say. Last month, scientists announced that the green-hued meteorite NWA 7325 shares many chemical similarities with Mercury, suggesting it may...

Why This New Exoplanet-Hunting Telescope Blows Kepler Out of the Water

With just a 30-second window, NASA launched its next exoplanet-searching satellite today (April 18) toward a never-before-used orbit that was discovered in the 1990s. The goal? To get the ultimate view of the night sky from a perfect orbit around Earth. Once inside that perfect orbit — it should take...

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Finds Hundreds of New Exoplanets, Boosts Total to 4,034

This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. EDT. NASA has unveiled the complete set of data from the first four years of the agency's Kepler Space Telescope mission, which stared at a single patch of the sky in the search for alien planets. The result: Kepler has discovered 219 new...

Scientists Hope to Extend Mercury Spacecraft's Mission

The first spacecraft ever to orbit the planet Mercury is nearing the end of its mission — unless its science team has anything to say about it. Researchers have petitioned NASA for a two-year mission extension on the Messenger spacecraft, which has already spent two years orbiting the closest planet...

See Elusive Mercury as 'Pink' Planet in Sunset Sky

Mercury, the speedy little planet closest to the sun, is making a special twilight appearance this month as a bright pink dot low in the sky. The show started on Feb. 8 and will continue until Feb. 21. If the sky is clear, Mercury should emerge about a half hour...

Discovery! Atmosphere Spotted on Nearly Earth-Size Exoplanet in First

For the first time, scientists have detected an atmosphere around a planet beyond our solar system that's just a little bit larger than Earth. The exoplanet GJ 1132b, which orbits the dwarf star GJ 1132, is located about 39 light-years away from Earth. It has a radius about 1.4 times...

Green Meteorite May Be from Mercury, a First

Scientists may have discovered the first meteorite from Mercury. The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science...